And then imagine opening the card…

One of my last photos of the Dwink

Always remember the above ^

Monkey holds the lamp now.

The Beatles will forever live in the Palmy Pouch

Spot the funny stuff.

It is always like hanging with Winner the Pooh with you.

Poison Milk…School Children.

And the birds are loving life outside of the pouch, and this bird you cannot change.

Yep, I got a new sponsor so Ima keep rolling

On Sunday 4th September after a big night of celebrations for Richard’s 25th birthday, we grabbed the necessary diet of coffee and pie for breakfast, packed the car full of equipment and headed to Merri Creek for our clean up day.

Although numerous motivational texts were sent to semi-committed friends, most of them opted for the seedy Sunday sleep in. We understand…
But we were committed to the cause.

The clean up was in our hands.

We put on our fluorescent safety vests, appropriate name badges with titles for the occasion (thanks Richard) grabbed some safety tongs that were generously provided by the Darebin City Council and began the clean up outside of the main entrance to CERES.

Just as the sun began to peak through the passing grey clouds, Simon our friend and Knight of Kneen street cruised in on his bicycle. Great success! Team Green turned quickly into Team Kneen!

A Bugie (cheap but brilliant Aldi beer) was necessary for this reunion.

Another addition to the clean up family was Paul who is a member of the Merri Creek Committee and invests much of his time into hosting clean up days. He had already been out and about at 9am that morning and cleaned areas along the East Brunswick strip before meeting us for a Round 2 Clean up. Amazing!

The four of us focussed on a particular zone each and I decided to cross the creek and attack the Darebin side; there was a surprising amount of plastic bags and rubbish that had wrapped around trees and lots of tyres and foam floating around. Paul informed us that much of this debris was a result of the raging floods in Victoria mid last year.

Paul then led us to the Darebin side and we walked 2km and focused on a strip near the creek. After a solid couple of hours filling bags and finding treasures (bouncy balls = WIN) we gave each other a big grin and decided to call it a day.

The highlights:

• Along the journey we came to a site where people had collected rubbish and transformed it into some kind of trashy art piece. Strange but interesting

• Richard finding something that was worse than trash and more fitting in the uh um, ‘waste’ category! Smelly

• I not wearing gumboots despite my recommendation to wear them resulting in very wet and soggy Vans! Smart

• A local couple asking us if we were volunteers or ‘doing community service time’ Ha ha! Controversial ?

• Our friends Steve and Parky rocking up after the clean up had finished Bitter sweet

l (the thought was there, cheers guys!)

The major highlight of the day was of course transporting the several bags of rubbish to the dump site and realising that it only takes a few pairs of hands to make a difference.

Big thanks to Paul for joining us for the clean up and the Darebin City Council for providing us with safety vest, tongs and equipment.

Merri creek is smiling again and now so can we!!!

OWNLIFE ?